Post-migration troubleshooting: WordPress redirects to old site after updating database

If you’ve ever migrated a WordPress site, either to another URL or for a Drupal to WordPress migration project, you’ll know that WordPress stores the domain name in its database. This means you’ll have to jump through some hoops when moving WordPress to another environment. A critical step is to update the database to reflect the new domain. My favourite tool for this used to be the database search and replace script from interconnect/it. The script is PHP-based so runs on all environments that host WordPress. I now prefer WP-CLI’s wp search-replace command when on my own development environment, or for client hosting that supports it. Nevertheless, interconnect/it’s tool is still my fall-back option for clients of my Drupal to WordPress migration service since many use hosts that don’t offer command-line access.

In nearly all cases, updating the siteurl and home fields in the wp_options database table achieves the bare minimum to get the site working after migration. Running a search-and-replace across the WordPress database (in particular, the wp_posts table) will resolve broken links containing absolute URLs.

wp-admin still redirects to the old site after updating wp_options?

Once-in-a-while, I’ll encounter a migration project where wp-admin still redirects to the old site even after running through the obvious steps of:

updating the database;

clearing the browser cache;

clearing the server cache.

It happens very rarely so I have yet to discover the cause. I suspect it’s something to do with sites that had a caching plugin installed, such as W3 Total Cache.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, the best workaround is to add the following two constants in wp-config.php:

This isn’t a nice long-term solution but it should at least enable you to log in for some basic site administration. Once you’re able to log in to the WordPress Dashboard, disable any caching plugins after first clearing their cache.